What’s this 90s vampire movie doing, being released in 2022?
Genuinely, I thought this was some kind of relic that had just gotten a wide release.
It’s fine. The humour’s hit and miss, the action is hilariously well done, the story is serviceable.
It’s kind of inconsistent its worldbuilding, in that it explains a lot of what things are but then forgets to ask why or to connect them together or pay things off fully.
Still, it’s silly fun that never takes itself seriously at all, so it’s mostly forgivable.
Not going to shake the world, but it’s worth a watch.
A wild, bloody, ridiculous action-comedy from the guy behind John Wick and Deadpool 2.
It’s assassins on a speeding train, with multiple overlapping jobs, changing objectives and an escalating series of Chekhov’s guns.
Feels very antithetical to a lot of modern Hollywood action fare: the edges are rougher, the gags don’t feel like they’ve been run through a committee. It’s refreshing, loose, silly fun.
It’s kind of a hot mess, but in a good way — pinballing from one absurd scenario to another, juggling a big cast of goofball personalities, and never for a moment taking itself too seriously.
It’s actually kind of impressive that a movie directed by the Russo Brothers, and starring Ryan Gosling, Ana de Armas, Chris Evans, Billy Bob Thorton and Jessica Henwick could be so utterly mediocre and forgettable.
Evans should absolutely be playing more villainous roles, he seems like he’s having a ball. But other than that, The Gray Man is little more than a mishmash of ideas from other action movies that have all been executed better elsewhere.
The result is something with no definitive personality of its own — just overlong shootout after overlong shootout with aimless, scattershot pacing. It feels solidly half again longer than it actually is.
There’s much better action films out there, don’t burn two hours on this.
Super sweet and charming, plus it’s refreshing to have a completely different perspective in the MCU.
Strong emphasis on culture, history and family from a Pakistani/Muslim perspective, made accessible by an extremely charismatic performance from Iman Vellani.
There’s a bit of a change-up in her powers compared to the comic, but I kinda get why. It makes her a bit more unique in the MCU, since Reed Richards is due to arrive in the upcoming Fantastic Four movie, and Marvel seems pretty much allergic to using The Inhumans for anything. It works here to tie them back to her heritage, and by the end of the season she’s using them in a way that’s practically the same idea, only done with sparkly gemstone type effects instead of stretchiness/Embiggening.
The villain arc is a bit weak, but it’s got youthful energy to spare, and a lot of fun production design.
Young Avengers lineup is looking promising!
Still, it’s fair to feel fatigue with the endless parade of superhero stuff, and it’s nice to have something lighter on the roster.
Excellent seafaring adventure, kind of in the same tonal vein as How To Train Your Dragon.
Animation, performances and production design are all top-class, with great action and colourful creatures for the kids, and elements of historical revisionism and imperialist undertones for the adults.
Would be genuinely surprised if this didn’t turn into Netflix’s flagship animated film franchise, since there’s plenty of room to grow from here.
I think this is the first time that an MCU film has been soundtracked by a single band, and Guns ‘n’ Roses fits the 80s Flash Gordon heavy metal kinda vibe perfectly.
Probably the most symptomatic of the Marvel “pandemic” phase, where things feel rushed to fit with unreasonable scheduling pressures.
Messy in tone, writing and pacing, BUT it’s also a lot of silly, irreverent fun. It’s choppy on both the micro and macro level — could have been improved with another pass on the script, less reliance on improv, and a bit more time given to the villain.
Still, it’s a light, campy escapade. Jane Foster gets a cool power set and a tragic arc, the production design is excellent, and the villain is creepy (even if Christian Bale is underused).
A good time, despite being undercooked and feeling like it was assembled too quickly.
Everything on show is bigger, wilder, more ambitious… and dammit if they didn’t manage to pull it off. It’s crazy that they can put together what is essentially an entire season of mid-budget movies and not have the thing collapse into itself like a dead star.
Of course, the performances and production design do a lot of heavy lifting, along with some incredible VFX and makeup work.
It’s always worn its influences on its sleeve, but more than any other point in its run, it really feels like its cohering into something more than just slick aesthetics and a stack of well-executed homages. Finally, it’s leaning confidently into itself, and is all the better for it.
If you like the show but thought the last two seasons were lacking somewhat in direction and growth: good news! It’s great.
Keeps going from strength to strength, and this was the season that finally tipped me over from just really liking the characters to loving them.
Yet again there’s an apocalypse to avert, so yet again the Academy has to work together to save the world. Only this time, they’ve managed to erase themselves from the timeline so there’s another family of dysfunctional heroes with weird powers to contend with as well.
Everyone’s grown and changed in some way, and so having the season remain relatively static in terms of locations allowed for more focused character work, dressed up in probably the best that the already-great production design has been for the show.
Casting and performances are pitch perfect, VFX are fun and creative, story’s weird and fun.
This is up there with Stranger Things and Dark as the more consistent Netflix fare, so hopefully we’re getting at least one more season, since it really feels like it’s moving towards another big shakeup going forwards.
It’s middling as an action film in its own right, and alters so much about the characters and lore from the games that it’s certain to irritate its established fanbase.
CG is wonky, performances don’t fit, characterizations are wrong, plot is so full of holes and leaps that it limps from one sequence to the next. Almost everyone is miscast, and those who aren’t are wasted.
Steals a few famous sequences from the games, but forgets that the joy of them comes from the interactivity, so having badly chopped recreations slapped together completely fails to capture any of their kinetic excitement or snappy writing.
The Uncharted games exist as a way of modernising classic Indiana Jones-type movies, which themselves were modernisations of pulp adventure serials. Taking the games and putting them back on film feels like a copy of a copy of a copy.
Apparently this was successful enough to declare it a franchise, so look forward to a bunch more utterly benign movies completely missing the point, I guess.
Nice to look at, fundamentally pointless. The embodiment of all the the things wrong with modern Star Wars.
Rather than take this opportunity to tell smaller, self-contained stories within the broader universe (ala the first season of The Mandalorian), we’re instead given the same tired runaround of connecting every arbitrary object and event to something that already existed in the other films. It’s fan-service at its flattest and most uninspired.
VFX are excellent, but performances are mixed, some of the action sequences have absolutely horrible geographic logic and choreography, the plot meanders and then goes nowhere important.
How can it?
Given that this takes place between Episodes III & IV, nothing of the conflicts it chooses to explore can have any consequence, and therefore there are zero stakes. Why have Vader and Obi-Wan meet and fight now, since we all know that both will survive? Why have Obi-Wan and Leia go on adventures when they’re barely acquaintances years later?
If anything, forcing all these characters to meet up now undermines any of the impact of the later films, and in many ways directly contradicts pre-established story beats. They actively make the good parts of Star Wars worse by this incessant need to only ever revisit the same handful characters and locations.
For a franchise with this much (very much strained) goodwill and financial backing, it’s a shame that it’s so utterly allergic to doing anything interesting with itself.
Honestly, I wouldn’t bother with it, and would be highly skeptical of anything Star Wars yet to come.
NERVE.SQUID.PILOT 